That’s the solution for Oakville and Mississauga when residents tire of waterfowl fouling their parks: Ship Canada geese in cattle trucks to the Aylmer Wildlife Management Area.

About 4,000 of them have arrived in the past couple of weeks — having worn out their welcome in the Toronto area by using waterfront parks as moulting conventions.

In contrast to Toronto’s garbage, which originates in Toronto and is shipped to stay in Southwestern Ontario, Canada geese start somewhere else and are only temporary residents of Aylmer.

“We call them moult migrants,” said Jack Hughes, manager of population conservation for the Canadian Wildlife Service, Ontario division.

They arrive in the Toronto area each spring from New York, Pennsylvania and other parts of Ontario for the annual phenomenon of losing their flight feathers.

There, where they find food and safety for the month that they’re unable to fly, they hang around the shores of Lake Ontario to eat, honk, poop, breed and shelter.

That’s when city officials, armed with special permits that allow them to capture migratory waterfowl, swoop in with their cattle trucks.

Destination: Aylmer’s Wildlife Management Area.

Within this enclosed, protected area with close-cut grass and a pond, they can grow back their flight feathers and safely head home, wherever home is.

Even the temporary hosts hope every goose will vamoose as soon as the flocks can fly again.

“They’ll go back to where they’re born,” said Keith Malcolm, a longtime volunteer who heads the management area. “We’ve got enough of our own, we don’t need any more.”

A licensed goose chaser, patrolling outside the fence as the migrants start to fly again, makes sure only the resident population of 125 geese stays.

“As soon as they get their new flight feathers, they’re going to re-disperse to where they want to be,” to where they were hatched, Hughes said.

Their leg bands show most don’t originate in Toronto, so it’s clear they’re not simply recycling the same birds each year, Malcolm said.

Malcolm said it works — since the relocation program began more than a decade ago, fewer geese are shipped here.

“I’d hate to be involved if it was just an exercise in futility. I’m satisfied in my own mind that the program is working.”

And the bonus for Malcolm: The annual donation GTA municipalities make to the Aylmer centre makes it possible for volunteers to keep feeding the stars of the area, the tundra swans that make migratory pit-stops here every spring on their flights north.

Urban goose populations are causing problems largely because they’re attracted to the same areas humans like: manicured lawns near large bodies of water. Their feces, and sometimes aggression if they’re nesting, have led to clashes.

It’s illegal under the international Migratory Birds Convention Act, to harass, kill, injure, relocate, or interfere with geese or disturb their eggs or nests.

The only exception is by special permit from Canadian Wildlife Service.

Cities such as Oakville and Mississauga, and others, may (if given permission) relocate troublesome birds, hire bird chasers ro oil eggs to keep them from hatching,

Canadian Wildlife Service will discourage relocation of nesting birds or goslings with parent geese.

The wildlife service recommends modifying habitats to make them less hospitable to geese: in urban environments, don’t feed them and keep grass longer.